Cancer Survivor Claims She Was Fired for Failing to ‘Tame’ Her Afro

A former security guard in New York City who won her battle against bone marrow cancer says that her employers told her to “do something with her hair,” which came back after rounds of grueling chemotherapy.

Tiffany Bryan, a former security guard at the Barclays Center indoor arena in Brooklyn, N.Y., is claiming that her employers, AEG Worldwide, constantly harassed her and ultimately fired her because she did not “tame” her natural locks, the New York Post reports.

The 27-year-old Queens, N.Y., native has filed a $900,000 lawsuit with the federal court in Brooklyn detailing the mockery she claims she endured before her eventual termination.

“It was ridiculous,” Bryan, who now works as a mail carrier, told the Post. “I couldn’t understand what they had a problem with. I would get compliments all the time from people at events at Barclays.”

Bryan opted to keep her hair in its natural state after surviving bone marrow cancer. “I just didn’t want to put any chemicals in it after that,” she recalled about her hair growing back after the rounds of chemotherapy in 2008. “After you lose it, you don’t want to do anything that might cause a problem again.”

She never had any problems relating to her hair until March, the Post notes, when Denise Brown, a security supervisor, told her that she “looked like she stuck her finger in a socket and was electrocuted.”

“At the time, I just took it as a joke,” Bryan said. “It was rude, but I just laughed it off. But it didn’t stop there.”

The comments escalated mere days later, when security manager LaNiece Tyree told her that she “needed to do something with her hair” and “tame it.” The alleged harassment continued, culminating in her bosses suggesting that she try to fix her hair into a ponytail.

“I told them my hair won’t do that,” Bryan told the Post. “It’s sad that it even had to come to that. I didn’t feel like it was appropriate.”